Computer scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley wrote this paper for the 2003 International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, with the intention of evaluating five different systems and the performance of their respective networks. Advantages of each configuration are outlined, and some optimization techniques are suggested....

An informative collection of articles on computer hardware and operation is presented by Ars Technica. Many of the more recent articles (July 2002 to February 2003) have shifted from focusing on specific technologies and platforms to explaining basic principles of computer architecture. This includes "pipelining and superscalar execution," bandwidth and latency, multithreading, and CPU caching....

The material on this site was motivated by the author's recent technical work with Bell Labs Research. It serves as an introduction to digital design of certain types of application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Although the details of the research project cannot be fully revealed, the basic principles of the technology are explained. This information can be used to implement "a matrix...

The Hot Chips conference was held in August 2002, and the presentations from the event were recently released online. The symposium was centered on high performance processors and the technologies used to design them. Many presentations are from key industry representatives who described cutting-edge microarchitectures and implementations such as the Itanium 2, GeForce4, and more. Others are from...

HyperTransport technology is an architecture that allows data transfer between chips in excess of ten gigabytes per second. This white paper from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), released in October 2002, considers the potential of HyperTransport in designing an input/ output bus for a microprocessor. The technology, while accommodating high speed demands, requires relatively little power, making it...

From the research laboratories of Hewlett Packard, Quantum Information Technology provides an informative look at current work in quantum information processing and communication (QIPC). The report, published in November 2002, recognizes the potential applications of QIPC and how it could revolutionize conventional information technology. It cites cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum...

Cern has recently posted this new preprint. The publication is a report prepared for the European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) containing an assessment and future plans for high performance computers in the field of lattice theory. Topics covered include hadronic spectroscopy, thermodynamics, quark masses, non-OCD physics, and algorithms and computing technology required for high...

Twice a year, the Top500 Project releases a list of the 500 sites with the most powerful supercomputers. The purpose of the list is "to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing." The latest version was unveiled in June, and this site examines some of the most important developments and newcomers to the list. Most important is the recently constructed...